RealClearEnergy: NEPA Overhaul Required to Reduce Supply Chain Risks and Eliminate Barriers to Net Zero

Give me some thoughts, folks: What's the purpose of NEPA, and how do we make it better?

Happy Monday! In case you missed it,

Debra Struhsacker

and I wrote an op-ed last week in RealClearEnergy describing how the burdensome permitting process holds up domestic mining and the U.S.’ net-zero ambitions.

Read it below! I have already gotten some fantastic comments from knowledgeable readers and I invite you to do the same — please comment below or message me with your thoughts. What is the purpose of NEPA and how do we make it better?

NEPA Overhaul Required to Reduce Supply Chain Risks and Eliminate Barriers to Net Zero

By Debra Struhsacker & Sarah Montalbano
October 21, 2024

In a long overdue acknowledgement that federal policies have made the U.S. dangerously dependent on China, the Biden-Harris Administration recently stated that China has “cornered the market” for critical minerals, leaving the U.S. “vulnerable to supply chain shocks and undermining economic and national security.”

The Administration should be worried about China, which dominates the entire EV battery mineral supply chain including mining, mineral processing, producing battery components, and manufacturing lithium-ion batteries. Even more troubling, the Department of Defense estimates that the U.S. would face shortfalls of 69 minerals, including 20 primarily controlled by China, in a conventional war with China.

Reversing the country’s dependency on Chinese minerals and materials by increasing domestic minerals production will require an overhaul of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Since its enactment in 1969, NEPA has morphed into a time-consuming and expensive process that invites litigation that causes nationwide delays of every type of infrastructure, energy, and commercial development project. 

The Biden-Harris Administration’s recently finalized NEPA rule will exacerbate permitting delays by creating higher hurdles and spawning litigation that will delay alternative energy, mining and transmission line projects and impede the energy transition nationwide. Fifty-four years of lawsuits and judicial activism have transformed NEPA into a game of gotcha that project opponents effectively use to challenge projects in federal court and send them back to the drawing board. Litigation contesting agencies’ NEPA decisions for proposed fossil fuel and clean energy projects is especially common, delaying them by an average of 3.9 years.

Encumbered by the glacial NEPA permitting process, the U.S. cannot respond to the skyrocketing demand for minerals or provide the electricity needed for power-hungry artificial intelligence data centers. Permitting obstacles constrict the mineral and materials supply chains that underpin national defense, technology, infrastructure and manufacturing. Permitting delays also put the Administration’s goal of 100% carbon-free electricity by 2035 out of reach. 

As described in the Center of the American Experiment’s new report, “Mission Impossible: Mineral Shortages and the Broken Permitting Process Put Net Zero Goals Out of Reach,” permitting risks and delays stemming from NEPA are a root cause of the nation’s dangerous dependency on foreign minerals and make implementing the Administration’s 2035 energy transition policies impossible. This report shows that current mining, permitting, and land use policies have made the country reliant on foreign countries for over 49 minerals essential to national defense and all economic sectors. 

Policies that put lands off-limits to development are equally problematic. This administration has banned mining of a worldclass copper-nickel deposit in Minnesota. The Bureau of Land Management’s new Western Solar Plan pits solar energy against mining and its Public Lands Rule creates a novel leasing process designed to prevent development. These policies are so harmful that Congress has introduced measures to block them. More land use restrictions are anticipated when BLM finalizes its Greater Sage-Grouse Environmental Impact Statement because the draft document resurrects an Obama-era proposal to prohibit mining on millions of acres across 10 western states.

Congress recently enacted the Building Chips in America Act of 2023 to create a NEPA work-around for certain semiconductor projects by exempting them from NEPA. Recognizing the urgency to increase domestic chip production, President Biden signed this act into law in early October. 

Rest assured, future semiconductor projects will not pollute the environment because with or without NEPA, they will still have to comply with the stringent environmental standards in the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and other federal environmental laws that govern projects. Because NEPA does not include environmental protection standards, eliminating the time-consuming and litigious NEPA process would not change environmental protection requirements or diminish environmental protection.

Congress’ decision to exempt urgently needed domestic semiconductor projects from NEPA signals that fixing this law will take too long to address the country’s risky supply chain vulnerabilities and mineral import dependencies. Congress should enact similar NEPA reforms to exempt the transmission lines, alternative energy, and domestic mining projects essential for the energy transition. This would be an important step towards eliminating NEPA as a project-blocking chokehold on our economy and an insurmountable barrier to achieving the administration’s energy transition goals. 

Ms. Struhsacker and Ms. Montalbano coauthored the report “Mission Impossible: Mineral Shortages and the Broken Permitting Process Put Net Zero Goals Out of Reach” for Center of the American Experiment. Ms. Struhsacker is an independent environmental permitting and government relations consultant, and one of the founders of the Women’s Mining Coalition. Ms. Montalbano is an energy policy fellow at Center of the American Experiment and a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum Center for Energy and Conservation. 

This piece was originally published at RealClearEnergy.org on October 21, 2024.